Supreme Court rules against newspaper seeking access to food stamp data

The Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to businesses seeking to block their information from being disclosed to the public after it winds up in the hands of the federal government.

The justices ruled in favor of retailers seeking to prevent a South Dakota newspaper from obtaining store-level data on the redemption of food stamp benefits, now officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The high court ruling rejected a half-century-old appeals court precedent that allowed the withholding of business records under the Freedom of Information Act only in cases where harm would result either to the business or to the government’s ability to acquire information in the future.

The latest case was set into motion when the U.S. Department of Agriculture refused to disclose the store-level SNAP data in response to a 2011 FOIA request from the Argus Leader, the daily newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The newspaper sued, but a federal district court ruled in favor of the USDA.

The Argus Leader appealed, and the U.S. Appeals Court for the 8th Circuit ruled that the exemption the USDA was citing did not apply in this case, sending the issue back to a lower court. The district court was tasked with determining whether the USDA was covered by a separate FOIA exemption governing information that would cause competitive injury if released.

That court ruled in favor of the newspaper, at which point the Food Marketing Institute, a trade group that represents retailers such as grocery stores, filed an appeal in lieu of the USDA.

Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch faulted the D.C. Circuit for setting a legal standard not found in the actual words of the FOIA statute. “We cannot approve such a casual disregard of the rules of statutory interpretation,” Gorsuch wrote.

Gorsuch also quoted a Justice Department brief, known as National Parks, as a relic from a “bygone era of statutory construction.” The 55-year-old decision was not binding on courts outside Washington, D.C., but most courts defer to the D.C. Circuit on FOIA matters.

"We’re disappointed in today’s outcome, obviously," said Cory Myers, the news director of the Argus Leader, in a story posted to the newspaper's website. "This is a massive blow to the public’s right to know how its tax dollars are being spent, and who is benefiting. Regardless, we will continue to fight for government openness and transparency, as always."

Business groups had urged the high court to strike down the longstanding precedent. News organizations and open-government advocates pleaded with the justices to leave it in place.

"Legislative history tells us the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, was created to shine a light on actions by the government, not on that of private parties, and the court’s expressed desire to refer our case back to the lower courts demonstrates that our case sets an important precedent well beyond disclosing store-level SNAP sales in grocery," said Leslie Sarasin, the president and CEO of the Food Marketing Institute, in a statement after the ruling.

All the Supreme Court’s conservatives and Democratic appointee Justice Elena Kagan joined Gorsuch’s opinion Monday.

Three justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor — partially dissented. Joined by his two liberal colleagues, Breyer said the majority’s ruling threatened to cloak information the public deserves to know.

“A tool used to probe the relationship between government and business should not be unavailable whenever government and business wish it so,” Breyer wrote. “Given the temptation, common across the private and public sectors, to regard as secret all information that need not be disclosed, I fear the majority’s reading will deprive the public of information for reasons no better than convenience, skittishness, or bureaucratic inertia.”

Breyer said he would hold that the word “confidential” encompasses a requirement that a business show at least some harm is likely to result from disclosure. However, he said he would back away from the D.C. Circuit’s rule that it must be “substantial” harm.

“I would clarify that a private harm need not be ‘substantial’ so long as it is genuine,” Breyer wrote.

Arren Kimbel-Sannit contributed to this report.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine